


Reach

by Bright_Elen



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (more or less), Anal Sex, And how, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Modification, But Also!, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Cybernetics, Emotional Baggage, Emotionally Repressed, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mind Rape, Minor Character Death, Mission Fic, Orgasm Delay/Denial, POV Cassian Andor, Past Brainwashing, Possession, Robot Sex, Robot/Human Relationships, Simultaneous Orgasm, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, Wire Play, or maybe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:01:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27735787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/pseuds/Bright_Elen
Summary: For the good of the Rebellion, Cassian volunteers to have a drone control interface implanted into his nervous system. It works exactly the way its creator said it would.That doesn't mean it works like Cassian expects it to.That would be enough to deal with, but then a new threat arises — one that forces K-2 to face things he thought he'd left behind.
Relationships: Cassian Andor & Original Character(s), Cassian Andor/K-2SO
Comments: 39
Kudos: 49
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs 2020





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nununununu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/gifts).



> Betaed by [robotboy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotboy/), who continues to be an inspiration, guide, and generally amazing fellow artist.

During the early days of the Empire, a gang of Stormtroopers chasing a boy through the streets of Caldera was not an uncommon sight. Sometimes they caught him, took back the food he'd stolen, and gave him a beating in return. Sometimes, he ducked inside a corner store hid amongst the dry goods while the troopers ran past.

And if the boy was very lucky, sometimes the proprietor of the shop gestured him over and put a crusty roll in his hands. He might have grumbled constantly and had the worst caf breath Cassian had ever been subjected to, but Old Idar also had a soft spot for hungry-looking, unattended kids. Even even at thirteen, Cassian fit the bill. 

Idar never said anything about the troopers, and Cassian never said he'd stolen something other than food.

He didn't have to steal food from regular folk as much, those days. He took some meals with his cell, and some in the neighborhood temple's soup kitchen, and some from Idar; he knew when the restaurants threw out the day's extras, and which Imperial warehouses had lax security. Cassian had a few stashes of ration bars in various hiding places around the neighborhood, and with all of that combined, he didn't go too long between meals anymore.

They still weren't big meals, but he'd started growing again, so things were better than they'd been right after—

Things were better. 

Old Idar helped lots of people, but especially children, though he kept a polite distance. That was, until you'd accepted his food three times. After that, he went Full Abuelo: lecturing about hygiene, bundling barely-worn coats over threadbare sweaters, giving aggressive sink shampoos in the cramped back room.

That's why Cassian was there when Maddin stumbled in clutching a bloody arm. 

His eyes flicked over Cassian, but he didn't show recognition. Cassian had always respected his bluffing and tried to do the same.

"I heard you can stitch up wounds," Maddin said, voice tight with pain.

Idar nodded to Maddin, then handed a towel to Cassian. "I think you can finish this yourself, yes?" 

Then Idar was guiding Maddin onto a chair, barely an arm's length from Cassian in the tiny space. Idar wound his belt around the man's upper arm as a tourniquet, and began to clean and sew the wound.

While he toweled his hair dry, Cassian observed closely; he wanted to know how to do stitches. He watched Old Idar's hands, and face, and the wound, and Maddin's knuckles white on the seat of the chair. He was watching when Maddin dug into his pockets, fumbled a flask out. He fumbled it badly enough that other things fell out of his pockets: electrical tape, a small coil of wire, a matchbook.

Cassian stiffened. It was a matchbook from the dingy hotel the cell lived in.

He looked at Idar immediately. Idar's eyes rested briefly on the matchbook, then went back to his task.

Maddin's eyes squinted shut as he drank. Cassian was the only one who knew what Old Idar had seen.

Did Idar know the man was Resistance? He had to suspect. And the matches weren't a sure bet, but they were something. 

Cassian should tell Maddin — or Odrig, their commander. 

But, there'd been talk about how hard it would be to find another place to stay if they lost the current residence. Too much suspicion, too much Imperial pressure. They'd already used up their contacts. 

So what would Odrig do, then, if Cassian told him? 

Odrig was the most careful of all of them. There was a good chance he'd kill Old Idar, just to make certain no one could betray them. 

But Idar wouldn't sell them out. Cassian was sure of it. He'd seen the old man refuse to serve a Stormtrooper who'd pushed another customer, earning himself a beating in the street later. He was safe.

But Cassian didn't think he could convince Odrig of that. 

The next time Maddin lifted the flask to his mouth, Cassian stretched his leg out and put his foot over the matchbook. Then he pulled his leg back, taking the matchbook with him. 

Maddin didn't notice. Idar's eyes flicked onto Cassian very briefly as he was shoving the matches into his boot.

Shit. 

Well, it had been nice while it lasted.

"I have to go, Señor Idar," Cassian said. He draped the towel neatly over the back of his chair. "Muchísimas gracias, por todo." He didn't dare say goodbye.

Idar looked at him for a long moment. "De nada. Cuídate." 

He didn't usually say that. Apparently Cassian hadn't had to say it outright.

Later, Cassian found a cafe whose opening employee traded pastries for gossip. That and hitting the restaurant dumpsters more often made up for the food shortfall easily enough. 

No one at either place went Full Abuelo, though. 

* * *

The morning after a successful raid, Cassian visited the café. Ana talked his ear off for a whole hour, but he was in such a good mood he didn't mind. 

He came back to the hotel to find his cell's rooms trashed. Drawers had been pillaged, mattresses ripped open, every piece of bland mass-produced art ripped from its frame, the bathroom mirror shattered. Cassian's bedroll lay in a heap on the floor.

There was a dark stain on the carpet near the door. 

All the weapons were gone. All of the maps and schedules and other intel, gone. 

Cassian felt hollow. 

He hadn't left anything there besides his blankets, but he didn't have a place to sleep lined up yet and he'd need all the warmth he could find. He made himself go in, never mind the blood. Never mind how he'd talked and laughed with the other resistance fighters just that morning; never mind that their loss was growing inside him, leaving him trembling around the voids in his bones.

He shook mirror shards out of the blankets and wound the first one around his torso. Then the other. His coat fit tightly over them, but it was workable.

He left, creeping out of the hotel with his heart in his throat. It wasn't until he was six blocks away that he realized troopers could have been waiting for him. He'd never know why they hadn't, except that his comrades hadn't given him up.

Cassian found an empty doorway to put his back against and let himself cry for the first time in years.

* * *

Spending two nights in a row at the same place spooked Cassian now; so he didn't. He bounced between doorways, the temple, the back room of the cafe. He tried to keep his schedule as random as possible, and was always on the lookout for something more defensible. 

At some point, Cassian ran into another of Idar's 'nietos.' They compared notes about shelter, food sources, and trooper movements. Then just whatever came into their heads.

"How's Old Idar doing?" Cassian missed him, and not just for the food and shampoos.

Dira covered her mouth with her hands. "Oh stars, you haven't heard?"

Cassian's stomach turned into a stone. "Heard what?"

Dira closed her eyes. "The Imps got him. And Pasha said…" she swallowed. "You know he picks up gossip from the officer's bars, right?"

Cassian nodded, numb.

"Pasha said." Dira's voice shook and dropped to a whisper. "Pasha said they interrogated Idar. Drugs and torture. Before the execution." 

It felt like the entire universe was crushing Cassian from every angle. "When?"

"Two, three weeks ago?" Dira pulled herself together a little. "Closer to three." 

Right before the cell was captured. 

There was sound and movement and fire in Cassian's lungs, and he didn't realize he'd taken off running until he was rounding a corner several blocks away. It was no time at all before he was at Old Idar's.

Except it wasn't Old Idar's any more. The sign had been changed, and a stranger was behind the counter. 

Choking, Cassian turned and ran again, this time in no particular direction. Eventually he careened into a public transit shelter, practically crashing against the wall, panting and crying and with his heart trying to beat through his chest.

It was his fault. Maddin, Odrig, Lani, Rafan, Palea. All of them were dead because of him, because Cassian had been too naive to realize that the most compassionate thing to do would have been letting Odrig kill Idar. 

Because once Maddin walked into the back room, Idar was dead one way or another. At least Odrig would have killed him quickly. But Cassian had been stupid enough to think that the Empire wouldn't get him, so it was Cassian's fault he'd been tortured.

After that, Cassian dissolved into animal fear and pain and horror. Then he spent a few hours desperately wishing he'd been the only one caught. And then, when the guilt and anguish had finished with him and he was left with only silence, he made himself a promise.

This would be the last time he'd condemn people because he didn't want to do what was necessary. 

Never again.


	2. Chapter 1

"Blasted strange guest list." Melshi leaned over to murmur in Cassian's ear as the conference room doors were sealed and Mothma called the group to order. "What do you think this is?"

Cassian wasn't the only one burning with curiosity — and not a little apprehension — at the assemblage of Intel, snipers, droid techs, doctors, and others. He was, however, the best at hiding it. "Remains to be seen." 

Once everyone fell quiet, Mothma spoke. "Good afternoon, everyone. I know you're all wondering why I called you here. I am pleased to announce that we have a rare opportunity to enhance our forces. This is Doctor Tiona Korden," she said, gesturing to the middle-aged woman in sensible clothing and a brightly-colored headscarf, "the inventor of NIM, a highly sophisticated piece of technology that could, if put to good use, aid our efforts immensely. She will explain the invention and how one or more of you might be involved." 

Cassian frowned. Calling in over two dozen people to get one volunteer meant that the tech was probably dangerous. 

"Thank you, Senator," Dr. Korden said. She cleared her throat, and activated the holodisplay. A simple image of a humanoid form wearing a backpack crouching outside a tiny window filled the center of the room. "I'm sure many of you have been in similar situations. This person could use any number of tools to access this building — explosives, lockpicks, subterfuge — but they all require the person to physically go inside. But what if you didn't have to?" The image became an animation. The backpack's straps uncurled from the humanoid's body, split into eight separate limbs, and started climbing the wall. "A machine — small, nimble, and versatile enough to slip past defenses and carry the tools required for specific missions — could go in your stead." 

One of the droid techs sat up straighter. "Doctor, sorry to interrupt, but we've proposed using recon droids before." He looked at Mothma. "Has the decision not to use them been reversed?"

"NIM is not a recon droid," Dr. Korden replied. "It's not a droid at all. It's a remote-controlled drone."

"We tried those," a black ops operative broke in. "The cameras are never good enough to get a feel for the space they're sent into, and the response time is shit." 

"If you would hold your questions until the end." Mothma wasn't asking, and the interrupters shut up.

"Thank you, Senator," Dr. Korden said once there was quiet again. "As I was saying. NIM is a remote-controlled drone, with multiple possible configurations." She pressed another button and the image changed to schematics. "As of right now the dataspike attachment, cameras, aural sensors, spark projector, and manipulating digits are ready. With more time, I could add virtually any implement — grappling hooks, poison dispensers, and so on — so long as it's small enough to fit on the end of the arm.

"But what you're all wanting to know is what sets NIM apart." Another image, this one of a humanoid from the shoulders up. "You," she said, looking at the ground ops guy, "are correct about the limitations of drones controlled via datapad or even a HUD simulator. NIM does not share those limitations." She tapped a button, and the display turned to three words stacked on top of one another, the first letter in each capitalized:

Neurologically

Integrated

Multitool 

"NIM's unique control format affords a wider sensory range and better response time than a standard drone. With proper integration and training, it can become as intuitive, fast and nearly sensitive as the limbs and senses we were born with."

A surprised murmur went through the crowd. Cassian stood a little straighter, concerned but also intrigued.

"The interface is implanted here." Dr. Korden pointed to the neck of the humanoid in the holo. Then, she pulled up her headscarf and turned around, showing a neat surgical scar at the base of her neck. 

Another wave of murmurs and whispers, this one more shocked. 

When there was quiet again, Dr. Korden turned back around. "It shows up on scans as a medical implant. The booster is slightly larger but can be integrated into jewelry or clothing." She pulled a heavy necklace out of her pocket and put it on, positioning a small, shield-shaped piece of duraplast over her scar, while the substantial beads acted as a counterweight. "It contains a wireless transmitter, encryption key, and battery. When in use, it networks with the implant." She reached up and squeezed a bead that no doubt hid the power switch. "It requires calibration to sync the user's thoughts with the device, but I estimate no more than a month for basic functionality. With time and increased use, it becomes more and more responsive." She unzipped the bag she'd brought with her, thumbed a switch on the machine inside, and held the bag open. 

With a faint whirring of servos, a silvery machine stepped out of the bag and onto the table. NIM had a central, flattened-teardrop-shaped chassis roughly the same size as a small backpack. Its eight slender, multi-articulated limbs — tentacles, really — radiated out from the body with a span of, Cassian estimated, more than three meters. 

Several people seated at the table leaned back, clearly uncomfortable. Cassian's ancient mammalian extincts didn't like it either, but not nearly as much as he appreciated the elegance of the design. 

The drone walked down the table to the end, where it paused before Melshi.

"May I borrow your stylus?" Dr. Korden asked. 

"Sure." Melshi looked only mildly wrong-footed.

"Thank you." Dr. Korden's eyes were closed, but NIM reached out, deployed a three-pronged pincer from the end of the tentacle, and plucked the stylus from Melshi's hand. Then, walking on seven tentacles while the eighth held the stylus aloft, NIM made a circuit of the table, returned the stylus to Melshi, and went back to Dr. Korden.

Dr. Korden stepped aside and used NIM to operate the holocontrols. Her eyes were open again, now in a thousand-yard stare. Unsurprising; it must take a certain amount of concentration. Astonishing, really, that she could do other things at the same time at all.

But she could. NIM worked. Cassian could think of dozens of failed missions that would have been salvaged by it. 

"This is incredible technology," he said, honestly. Then, probing: "You could make a lot of money with this." 

Dr. Korden bared her teeth at him. "I could. But the Pike syndicate extorted my university for their so-called protection, then turned tail at the first sight of the Empire. I'm sure I don't need to tell you what _they_ did to us. Damn all of them." 

A cheer went up, accompanied by table-thumping. It took a few minutes for Mothma to regain order and turn the floor back to Dr. Korden. 

"This is a prototype," Dr. Korden continued. "I've only tested the interface on myself. There's a small chance it won't work at all on someone else, and a larger one there will be unforeseen complications." The machine crawled back into its bag, and as it powered down Dr. Korden's gaze returned to the meeting. "And then, of course, there's the user adjustment. Being able to hear and see from two different bodies is disorienting to begin with, to say the least. I won't install this in anyone who doesn't have excellent body-mind integration and multitasking abilities."

"Is the interface electrical or chemical?" Dr. Berav asked. "Do we need to be concerned with neurotransmitter levels?"

"Electrical," Dr. Korden answered. "There's no disruption of brain chemistry." 

"Still," one of the snipers said. "Isn't this effectively altering someone's mind? Why are we even considering this? Why not just use droids?"

"There are many objectives we don't risk assigning to droids, for various reasons," Dodonna said. "To put it bluntly, this machine will be used in both reconnaissance and assassination. None of the Council trust assassin droids."

Cassian's jaw tightened.

"Besides," Cassian's old recruit Drimarch said, "you'd really trust intel work to a droid? Much better to have a person at the controls." 

Cassian's blunt nails bit into his palms. As with every other time such sentiments were voiced, he couldn't afford to confront them. His refusal to allow anyone to touch Kay's programming pushed enough boundaries as it was.

"The other Generals and I have decided that this is a course of action worth pursuing," Mothma said, ending that line of discussion. "The question at hand is if someone is willing to volunteer."

Silence fell. A few people looked contemplative, like they were really thinking it over; most had already rejected the possibility.

The quiet stretched out across thirty seconds. One minute.

Cassian sighed internally. Kay wasn't going to be happy about this. "I'll do it."

All heads turned towards Cassian. Most faces showed people re-evaluating their estimations of Cassian; some showed revulsion; others still, admiration.

Draven's was the only one with a mix of pride and resigned concern. 

"Thank you, Captain Andor," Mothma said. "If anyone else is willing, it's always prudent to have options in the event that the device is incompatible with the Captain." 

Or in case it killed him, she didn't say.

* * *

"I'm sorry, you'll have to repeat that," K-2 said, looming in the middle of Cassian's quarters. "My auditory sensors must be malfunctioning, because volunteering for experimental augmentation of your central nervous system would be a ludicrously bad idea beyond even _your_ typical recklessness and atrocious self-preservation protocols." 

Cassian spread his hands. "I know it's dangerous, Kay. But the scientist knows what she's doing, and there have been so many times I could have done more with something like this." He gave Kay a considering glance. "Plenty of injuries I could have avoided." 

Kay huffed. "Perhaps. Or perhaps you'll just throw yourself into even more danger because you can." 

Sighing, Cassian wove around Kay to his locker and began unpacking the gear for the mission he was no longer assigned to. "It will also let me stay out of danger I'd be forced to expose myself to otherwise. Remember Hosnia Three?" He'd gotten into the Imperial administration building just fine; once a panicking informant had hit the fire alarm, however, the only way out had been from a third-story window. The thorny busaren vines underneath had at least kept him from breaking his legs, but it had taken a lot of bacta patches to heal the deep scratches all over his body.

If he hadn't needed to go into the building in the first place, or if he'd been able to send NIM through the ventilation system to the control room and open the fire doors, he could have avoided that. 

"Of course I remember," Kay snapped. "I don't have an unreliable, squishy, _delicate_ central nervous system like you organics."

Something in Cassian's chest clenched, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Kay—"

"I should also mention," Kay barrelled on, "that when you die, it will only be a matter of time before someone tries to wipe my memory or install a restraining bolt, no matter what your will says."

Cassian stopped unpacking and looked up, feeling vaguely sick. "I'm going to die at some point," he said softly. "It can't be helped. When that happens, you should go. Steal a ship and leave." He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. "Or before I die. I'll report you as destroyed."

He didn't want to. It was simply far preferable to anything happening to Kay. 

"The fact," Kay said, drawing himself to his full height, "that you're even making that offer shows what an utter idiot you are, _Captain_. Maybe you won't be losing that much brain power if the scientist botches the implant."

With that, Kay stomped through the door and disappeared down the corridor. 

It felt like all the air left Cassian's lungs as he sat down heavily on the bunk. What the hell? Kay had been angry with him before; why did it bother him so much now?

He checked his chrono. He still had almost two hours before he was due to report to Medical for the pre-op exam. Plenty of time to train until the exertion drained away this torrent of unidentified emotion. 


	3. Chapter 2

Cassian didn't die on the surgical table, or immediately after. Thanks to the skill of the doctor, the brilliance of the design, and lots of bacta, Cassian's body accepted the implant without fuss. 

K-2 fussed enough for the both of them, making sure Cassian ate and drank and took his medication during the observation period. Though he was clearly making an effort to achieve the most irritating caretaking the galaxy had ever seen, Cassian tolerated it; it was only one day in Medical, anyway, and a week of doing small tasks around Base One to make sure that his nervous system still did all the things it used to. Aside from the occasional odd tingle down his spine, everything seemed normal.

"You're adapting well," Dr. Korden said, during his daily appointment with her exactly one week after the surgery. "Do you feel ready to start calibration?" 

He didn't say that he had no idea what 'ready' would feel like, but he was healthy. "Yes." 

She passed him the booster. His was hidden in a leather strap counterweighted by the battery and what turned out to be a fold-out tool. "Might as well carry what you need to open it up." 

Cassian's fine tools were usually rolled up in his boot, but this would be less conspicuous than a necklace. He slipped the strap over his head and settled it into place. 

On activation, there was a weird buzz under his skin, though it quickly subsided. It didn't worry Dr. Korden, either. "Vitals and pupillary response are normal." 

Then she brought NIM out, placing it on the table next to the one Cassian was sitting on. She gave him an expectant look. He nodded. She turned it on.

Suddenly, Cassian was looking at NIM and also looking at himself through NIM's camera. The dual images were so disorienting that he immediately closed his eyes. That helped; it was still bizarre in the extreme to see himself from the outside, but not much worse than looking at himself on surveillance footage, or in one of Kay's memories. 

Maybe it would help to look at other things. He decided he wanted to look at the stone wall to NIM's right. He felt the impulse, and then his field of vision shifted as NIM turned to the right.

Dr. Korden made an intrigued noise.

"What is it?"

"You've initiated movement much sooner than I did. I'm interested to see if your entire calibration is faster or if you're going in a different order." NIM shifted again, and he saw Dr. Korden smiling. "Even if you never take this into the field, your data will be a meaningful contribution to the study of neuro-controlled machinery." 

"I appreciate your curiosity, Doctor, but I'm not here for research." 

She snorted. "I've been told you're rather single-minded, yes. Don't worry. If you keep adapting at this rate, you'll be ready for missions very soon." 

Cassian nodded, eyes still closed. He used NIM to look all around the room, and then even got it to move three of the tentacles. 

Maybe he could do more if he could see NIM from the outside. He opened his eyes again.

Now his brain was trying to integrate both sets of visual input. It was a little like his face was enormous and he was wrapping it around the space inside the room. Oddly, it helped: the next time he lifted NIM's tentacles, he managed to get a fourth.

"Try looking around, but keep your eyes open," Dr. Korden suggested.

Cassian tried it. The wheeling-stretching-morphing of the image gave him vertigo, and he almost fell off the table.

He did throw up. 

"I think that's more than enough for today," Dr. Korden said, and Cassian didn't argue.

* * *

The rest of calibration went similarly: amazing expansions of Cassian's sensory capabilities and motor control, followed by the effects of wrapping his brain around things humans had never been wired for. The first day, it was nausea; the second, a migraine; the third, disorientation that lasted even after he'd disconnected, so severe that he had to keep a hand against the wall as he walked back to his quarters. 

He hadn't even made it past the mess hall when Kay found him.

"Were you too disoriented to use your comm?" he said pointedly, looming disapprovingly over Cassian even as he put a hand on his shoulder to steer him. "I could have met you in Medical."

Cassian shrugged, the edges of Kay's palm and fingertips pressing more firmly into his shoulder for that half-second. "I would have gotten back on my own." 

Kay simulated a snort. "When, tomorrow morning?" 

Kay's hand was doing more than just nudging him in the right direction and keeping him balanced, Cassian realized. The touch was grounding. By the time they were at the door to his quarters, Cassian's brain felt like all of it was back inside his head again. 

"You stay put," Kay said, sitting him down on the bunk. "I'll be back in a few minutes with food that you are going to eat. No arguments." 

Now both hands were on Cassian's shoulders. Perhaps because he wasn't disoriented anymore, Cassian suddenly felt overwhelmed, and shrugged him off. "Yeah, fine."

The rest of the week was better: the nausea, headaches, and disorientation were fading. He'd gained the ability to move NIM around a room, climbing from table to floor to wall; to use the camera in both day and night mode, all while keeping his own eyes open.

Dr. Korden made him take a day of rest by the simple expedient of forwarding her instructions to Mothma, who forwarded them to Kay. 

That evening, they were walking a leisurely perimeter around the main temple building, and Cassian was enjoying the fresh air and deep blue of the sky. 

"Congratulations," Kay said. "You've invalidated yet another of my predictive models. You even have the nerve to have been more than minimally compliant with your health guidelines, which means I can't even be properly annoyed with you."

A tension Cassian hadn't really been aware of relaxed. "Don't worry," he said, hiding a smile by looking at the carving on the ancient building. "I'm sure you'll have a reason to be properly annoyed with me again soon." 

"Undoubtedly." 

They kept walking, Kay giving Cassian his predictions for which kind of annoyance he would present first ("sixty-one percent likelihood of failing to share critical mission details"). Cassian couldn't fault him for it, really.

"...and twenty-eight percent chance of unnecessary injury, at which point I will, one, have to extract you from whatever ridiculous situation you've gotten yourself into, and, two, put up with you while you're on yet more medical leave." 

The last conversation they'd had before the surgery played again in Cassian's memory. His steps slowed, then stopped.

Kay was only two meters ahead when he realized Cassian had stopped. He turned around. "What is it?"

Cassian looked up at him. Feeling like an ass was a fairly common occurrence for him, but it was always worse when he'd slighted Kay. 

He swallowed. "I'm sorry."

Kay turned to fully face him, head tilted, leaning back expectantly. "For?"

Cassian licked his lips. "I should have told you that I appreciate everything you do for me. And I'm sorry for doing something that might have messed up all your hard work." He shrugged and wound up looking at the Temple wall again. "I know it doesn't change anything." 

In his peripheral vision, the line of Kay's posture softened infinitesimally. His voice was softer, too. "It changes some things." 

He didn't elaborate. Contrary to his reputation, he didn't always share every last thought he was having. But it still meant there was something he didn't want to talk about, and Cassian wasn't sure what to make of that. 

At least Kay seemed somewhat mollified. "Come on." He turned around again. "The predatory fauna is more active nocturnally, and it's getting dark." 

Cassian caught up, and they went back inside before they got eaten by piranha beetles.

* * *

The following week, Cassian was left only with mild headaches at the ends of his sessions, and he could manipulate small objects with one tentacle while keeping NIM walking along with four or more of the others. It was enough for low-risk recon missions, and Dr. Korden promised that training in the field would accelerate his acclimation. 

Draven briefed him. "You're going to Vossa Station in the Fenyha system. Use NIM to access the dead drop. If you're feeling up to it, take some surveillance footage of the Commissioner's office."

"Yes, sir." 

It went well. Cassian pretended to browse a spare parts stall two junctions down the corridor from where NIM climbed up an empty alcove to a vent, snaked a tentacle inside, and pulled out the data chip left there. When the chip was safely stored in NIM's compartment, Cassian strolled in its direction. In the alcove, he had NIM latch onto him like a backpack, and then he was walking away.

The Commissioner's office had moderate security. It was easy enough to send NIM through another vent and use the camera and microphone at the ends of two of its tentacles to check the room.

It was empty. NIM crept closer, right up to the vent grille. Cassian was lucky enough that the desk was within NIM's reach, and he extended the data spike. 

Another tentacle, one with manipulating digits, used the console, and soon NIM was downloading secure station intel. A few minutes of that, and then he was withdrawing, leaving no trace of his presence, and recalling NIM through the ducts. 

Once he was back on the ship with Kay and in hyperspace, he plugged NIM into a datapad so he could read whatever he'd just stolen. 

Most of it was mundane station operation details, as he'd expected. A little bit of everyday corruption as well; nothing the Rebellion cared about.

But, wait. Cassian went back to a certain file. He frowned.

"They can't possibly be selling that much ferrous metal to a manufacturer," Kay said from directly behind him. After years of such stealthy approaches, Cassian didn't even jump anymore. 

"No," Cassian said. "They certainly aren't producing it, and it's far too small a station to be moving that much." 

"Who's the buyer?"

Cassian scrolled through the file. "Looks like…" Cautiously, he turned to look up at Kay. "Arakyd Industries."

"I see." Kay was still for a moment, then waved a hand dismissively. "Well, I suppose the brass will decide our next move." 

He was doing a decent job of brushing it off, but Cassian wasn't fooled. He wasn't the only one who had mixed feelings about his past. 


	4. Chapter 3

Dr. Korden was pleased with Cassian's account of NIM's performance, as well as with his latest brain scan. 

Medical gave him the usual much-streamlined check-up.

The debrief with Draven was about as he'd expected; Draven put him on three days of leave, and then he was scheduled to go back to Vossa to find out what Vossa's Commissioner was really selling to Arakyd.

Cassian spent most of the mission in a hotel room, piloting NIM through the extensive ventilation system. He already had the schedule for the next Arakyd pickup, and it was easy enough to get NIM into the cargo bay ahead of time. 

An hour before the scheduled departure, there was still no cargo. The suspense had Cassian pacing back and forth in his room.

Twenty minutes later, warning lights started spinning, and the bay doors opened. On the other side of the force field was a Zeta-class cargo shuttle.

Cassian paused. It could mean nothing; many organizations used the Zetas.

The shuttle landed. Cassian used the noise and movement as cover for NIM to open the vent and climb down the wall, then hide behind some empty containers. 

The shuttle hatch opened, and a pilot in an Imperial flight suit came down the ramp. Whatever the Vossa Commissioner was doing, it was definitely something the Alliance should know about.

The pilot met with the dock manager, and then loader-lifter droids were removing crates from the ship. Fifteen minutes later, the empty shuttle departed.

Cassian waited for the droids and other crew to move to another bay, and then he slunk over to the nearest crate, sliced it, and got a look inside.

It was a case of helmets; death trooper? They were all black, and the styling was very similar, but they looked too big. Maybe it had just been too long since Cassian had seen a death trooper, and he wasn't remembering it right; or maybe the perspective from NIM's camera was throwing him off. Either way, he recorded the armor on visual, electromagnetic, and radio frequencies. When he was done, he produced a tracker from NIM's storage compartment and hid it between layers of packing foam.

He climbed back up into the vent, hiding until the Arakyd ship came and went. 

* * *

"No, it isn't death trooper gear," Kay said. "Wrong proportions. Besides, Arakyd hasn't worked in armor before, and the death troopers have been around for a while." 

"Upgrades?" Unlikely, but worth asking about.

"Doubtful," Kay said. "It could be..." 

When he didn't finish, Cassian looked up. "Could be what?"

Kay glanced away. "I'd rather not speculate until I have more data." 

" _ You _ don't want to speculate?" Cassian didn't like that at all. "Most of what you do is speculate." 

Kay simulated a snort. "And most of what you do is espionage, yet you don't hear me surprised when you don't want to kill or interrogate someone."

Cassian might have been stung if he hadn't been so concerned. "You aren't usually this mean, either. Are you alright?"

Kay turned away. "There's nothing wrong with me. Can't you ignore this like you ignore all of your own problems? This won't even blow up in your face later on."

Inhaling sharply around the hurt — Kay always knew where to hit — Cassian shook his head and started putting NIM and the data pad away. "Fine." 

He couldn't put it from his mind, though, not the possibility Kay had hinted at, nor the fact that Kay was obviously not fine.

* * *

It was a long, awkward trip as they tracked the cargo ship, made worse because it was jumping through hyperspace erratically enough that the rebels had to follow on its heels, no matter how inefficient the path. By the time the cargo ship was entering the atmo of a mid-rim planet whose Alliance archives entry was little more than a set of coordinates, Cassian and Kay were barely speaking.

A few minutes on the local holonet confirmed what Cassian had suspected. "Korla isn't anywhere in the public data on Arakyd." 

"Arakyd Industries has many unlisted facilities," Kay pointed out primly. Then his vocabulator lowered its volume. "But...this one wasn't even in their own records." 

_ Kark _ . "Could be new." 

Kay made a staticky noise. "Of course it could. It could be new, or old, or even the original, secret headquarters no one knows about, complete with a dive bar front and a password to get in." His voice was back to its recent default of almost too sharp for civil conversation. "We have nothing to go on!"

Of course; Kay always hated not having enough data to make predictions. Cassian should have realized that sooner.

Cassian hesitated, then clapped a hand on Kay's lower arm. "It won't be a mystery for long." Not that he had no way of knowing if he could make good on that.

Kay simulated a snort. "You have no way of knowing if that's true." Regardless, his posture lost some of its tension. "Now go check the drone and let me scan." 

Cassian didn't need to, but he went anyway.

* * *

Cassian presented his cover identity to the Arakyd hiring office. 

They made him sign a discretion pledge; explained that it was about the security of the Empire, all legal, but it was vital that it be kept secret. Cassian projected an air of being too worried about his next paycheck to mind, and then he was being given the introductory tour of the areas of the factory he would need to know. 

His job would be, ironically enough, checking the arriving shipping crates and their contents, making sure they got sent to the right parts of the factory, and returning the empty crates to the shipping bay. It was a job that could have easily been done by a droid, but Cassian's meagre paycheck was less than the average weekly cost of droid purchase and maintenance. 

Within a week, Cassian knew that most of the armor pieces were being shipped in from other factories and only assembled on-site. He opened crates of helmets, chest plates, greaves, pauldrons, and took images of all of them, albeit from the distance of NIM's hiding place in the rafters. 

When he was confident he knew his way around enough to work and drive NIM at the same time, he began exploring. He found the best route to the office, the staff break room, the security center. He discovered four separate factory floors; two of them were assembly only, and one was manufacturing assembly components. The last one was where the armor was going. 

When he found it, Cassian stared. Just like on the assembly lines, there was an assembler droid, taking pieces of armor and...welding them together? Why would…?

But then, he got a better look further down the line. Between a vambrace and pauldron, Cassian saw a silver circle, one so familiar he had to cough to cover his quiet gasp.

It was a joint exactly like Kay's. 

Arakyd wasn't in the armor business at all. It was making combat droids. From the size of them, very deadly combat droids: the units coming off the belt had the height of a KX, the breadth of a Clone Wars-era super battle droid, and the styling of Stormtrooper armor. Cassian could only speculate what their programming might be like.

Kriff. This had to be what Kay hadn't wanted to talk about. Cassian couldn't blame him; they'd only talked about it once or twice, but Kay had mixed feelings about his manufacturer on the best days. 

They'd never talked about battle droids. Cassian hadn't really thought about that fact until now, and it made him feel like he'd let Kay down somehow. 

Trying not to show his turmoil, Cassian drove NIM back to its hiding spot. Maybe once he'd finished his current rounds, he could take a break and stand still for long enough to concentrate on using NIM to break into the office. 

Of course, that's when a major shipment arrived. At the end of his shift there were too many people to recall NIM without being noticed, so he left it on standby in the ducts and returned to his rented room. 

"Kay-tu, do you read?" The hostel's neighborhood was noisy enough that he wasn't worried about anyone overhearing his comm calls. 

"I read you, Captain." 

"Meet me at the primary location tonight." 

"Affirmative." 

* * *

"Hello, Cassian." Kay didn't bother turning his vocabulator down; the warehouse had been abandoned for years.

"We have an unexpected development," Cassian said by way of greeting. "It's not armor; it's battle droid parts." 

Kay hunched forward a few degrees. Despair? Relief? "I was afraid of that."

Cassian nodded. "The final product looks like a cross between a B-2, Stormtrooper armor, and…" Cassian hesitated only a fraction of a second, but he was sure Kay noticed. "A KX." 

"Of course they are," K-2 muttered. "It's likely that the Empire ordered them to prioritize intimidation. Shall I bring the thermal detonators?"

Cassian managed not to convey how surprised he was that Kay seemed unambivalent. "Not yet. I had to leave NIM there, and we still don't know where they're sending the chassis. I don't think they install the data cores here, though even if they do, we still want to know where the finished droids are going." 

"Do they operate at night?"

"A reduced crew. I'll go in, use NIM to break into the office, see what I can get. If that doesn't work, I'll plant some trackers, and we wait for the shipments to be sent." 

"Agreed. I'll cover you."

Cassian frowned. "There aren't any KXs of your generation on site. They'll find you out."

"Of the two of us, who can take a blaster bolt and keep walking?"

Frustration rising, Cassian shook his head. "I don't have time for this. Fine, cover me, just don't say anything." If no one looked closely enough, it probably wouldn't be a problem. 

He shouldn't have even thought it. 

* * *

After talking his way into the employee locker room, Cassian snuck further into the building. From the office 'fresher, he piloted NIM to the supervisor's desk and started slicing. He got the shipping manifests and the supervisor's most recent correspondence.

"—enant Sward," Kay's voice crackled over Cassian's comm link, echoing slightly against the 'fresher walls. "He will be returning shortly, and we will be on our way." 

"Shit," Cassian whispered, already recalling NIM from the office. Kay should have still been just outside the main doors, so he headed there.

"Lieutenant Sward shouldn't have left you here," the other voice continued. "Comm him so I can talk to him. Otherwise, we're going to have to impound you." 

_ Shit.  _ Cassian slowed to a walk, trying to get his breathing under control so he wouldn't sound winded on the comm.

"That will not be necessary." Kriffing hell. Why wasn't Kay playing along? Cassian started running again.

"That's it, then," the other voice said, and that's when Kay ended the call. Cassian swore, skidded around the last corner, and NIM leapt from the vent onto his back, four tentacles winding around his shoulders and waist. The one with the spark projector hovered over his head, ready to strike, and he drew his blaster.

He was through the door just in time to see a human security officer draw his blaster on Kay, who stood a few meters away. Cassian's arrival spooked the officer, and he had to dive to the side to avoid being shot himself.

Cassian succeeded in not being shot. Unfortunately, he also landed on thorn bush. Most of the spines didn't get through his clothes, but a few drove into his calf. Not too bad, considering.

When he came up in a crouch, Kay had the officer's blaster in his hand and was standing over the man's crumpled body. 

"Kriff," Cassian said, looking up and down the road. Nobody, so far. "Can you slice the security footage?"

"I already did," Kay said. "Otherwise there would have been more than just one officer. Did you get what you needed?"

"Think so." He glanced up at Kay. "Come on." 

* * *

Back at the hostel, Cassian brought the lights up and started digging for the datapad. The sooner they knew about the droids' destination, the sooner they could leave.

"You're injured," Kay accused. "Of course you are. And of course you said nothing." 

Cassian glanced down; there were very small blood spots on his trouser leg where the thorns had stabbed him. "It's not that bad, Kay. A bacta patch should do the trick." 

"You say that about seventy percent of your wounds, over half of which require more medical attention than a simple bacta patch." Kay loomed over him. "Remove your boot and roll up your trouser leg." 

Cassian sighed and got his boot off. When he went to roll his trouser, however, the pull of the fabric against his flesh sent a flare of pain through his whole lower leg like it was on fire.

"Kriff." He concentrated on breathing. "Think I landed on something poisonous."

Kay kneeled in front of him. He held Cassian's ankle carefully in one hand to examine the injury. "Poisonous, or an allergen." He pulled out the emergency medical kit. "I'm giving you a bacta injection, analgesics, and a blood test." 

Cassian's hands were white-knuckled on the edge of the mattress. Kay used the lancet in the kit to prick Cassian's skin near the puncture wounds and take a few drops of his blood. Cassian barely felt it against the backdrop of whatever was burning through his flesh.

Then Kay prepared an injection of mixed bacta and painkillers. He had to grasp Cassian's calf, and just that small pressure increased the pain several times over, driving a whimper from Cassian's throat that he barely registered. It was a while before the painkillers took enough effect for Cassian to be aware of much else besides the pain. 

His fists were balled in the sheets, and his free tentacles had snaked across the mattress and floor to twitch feebly at Kay's plating. He'd curled one of them partway through an ankle joint.

He hadn't meant to do that. He tried to pull back, but his metal wouldn't cooperate.

"Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to."

Kay looked up from tidying the kit. "I know." 

The pain faded further, and with it, coherence. Everything was warm, and he was so tired. When Kay nudged him down onto the bunk, he went without protest.

* * *

When Cassian woke, his leg was no longer on fire, and he wasn't delirious anymore. Kay was sitting on the floor next to the bed, eyes flickering as he worked through some problem. 

NIM had coiled a tentacle around his waist and one each through the ankle, knee and elbow joints it could reach. 

Cassian felt the blood drain from his face. He focused, and then, finally, he was able to make NIM withdraw. When it was quiescent on his back, he clicked off the booster. 

Hopefully Dr. Korden could shed some light on the problem, when they got back to base. 

"Kay?"

Eyes clicking into steady light, K-2 looked him over. "Feeling better?"

Cassian nodded. "You in the factory records?"

"Yes. I have learned that this is not the site of final assembly. The chassis are shipped to another facility to have the personality matrices installed." 

Cassian frowned. "We have a location for that? Or their final destination?" 

"No final destination, or any financial clues pointing to it," K-2 said, "but the final assembly happens on Ansion."

For once, a convenience: Yavin was on a nearly direct path between Korla and Ansion. "Home first."

* * *

Draven was not pleased to hear about the advanced combat droids — Arakyd Support Platforms or ASPs, according to the records. Before Cassian had been on base three hours, he had new mission objectives: first, determine the final destination of the ASPs. Second, destroy the facility installing the data cores.

The session with Dr. Korden contained almost no intelligence, but everything Cassian could remember about NIM's operation. Or rather, everything up until they'd made it back to the hostel.

"It sounds like it's performing well. I'm especially pleased you caught it while running."

Cassian nodded. "It's an excellent tool. You've done amazing work."

"Thank you. And thank you for all the field tests you're doing for me." She winked, and Cassian's mouth quirked up.

"Although," he began. "I do have a concern." 

Dr. Korden's face went serious. "Oh?"

"NIM has been acting on its own." 

Dr. Korden pursed her lips. "Returning to the last place it received your signal?" 

Cassian shook his head. "No. I was still wearing the booster, and it reached out when I didn't tell it to."

"Have you run a diagnostic to check for viruses? Or the access logs? I've done everything I can to prevent it from being sliced, but there's no way to make it completely safe." 

"We did, but I'd appreciate you taking a look." 

"Of course." She made a note on her datapad. "If there's nothing amiss, the only other possible explanation is that you gave it commands without realizing it." 

Cassian frowned. He didn't remember giving NIM any commands. "Possibly," he allowed. "I did get poisoned." 

"Well, " she said, eyebrows raised, "I'll run my own diagnostics and let you know as soon as I'm done."

"Thank you."

He was still checking their ship's resupply when Dr. Korden called him. 

"I didn't find anything wrong. You're good to get back in the field." 

"Thanks."

Cassian sighed. He'd just have to avoid toxins. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beautiful wife had the idea for the ASPs before either of us saw the Dark Troopers in the Mandalorian, so the resemblance to *those* big Stormtrooper-esque battle droids is just parallel evolution of stompy motherfuckers. (Though, if you took a Dark Trooper and made it taller and broader, it's pretty much exactly what an ASP looks like.)


	5. Chapter 4

Analysis of the intel led them to another secret Arakyd facility on Ansion. 

During the hyperspace transit, Cassian watched Kay putter at the controls. He wasn't holding himself differently than he usually did, but Cassian was fairly sure Kay was drawing out taks unnecessarily.

But Cassian wasn't the only one to recognize the tension in the cockpit. "Spit it out."

Cassian shifted in his seat to better face Kay. "It's Arakyd, and it's combat droids. I'd understand if you don't want to be directly involved." 

"You think I'm emotionally compromised." 

"I'd be emotionally compromised if the mission was to take out a factory on Fest." Just saying it had a knot forming in his chest. 

"A home planet and a manufacturer are very different, Cassian."

"For the sake of argument, fine." They could bicker about that later, if need be. "Doesn't really matter. What does is that you've been upset, and I need to know if that's going to be a problem." 

Kay finally looked at Cassian. "It's not." 

Cassian wished he could be reassured by that. 

* * *

Finding the factory on Ansion was unnervingly simple. Waiting until after all the administrators had gone home for the evening, infiltrating the grounds, and finding the office was only a little more difficult. 

The interior layout was worrying: there was a very long corridor between them and the exit, with only two cross-corridors. Kay was monitoring the security channel via the scomp outside the locked office door, but that only helped Cassian's nerves so much. He stood with his back against the wall, only half-aware of his surroundings as he looked for a path for NIM through the ventilation system. 

A few moments later, he found the office. This facility was in better condition than the one on Korla, and so Cassian had to spend a couple of minutes finding the right angle to pry the vent grille off. Then the clatter of it hitting the desk and floor was loud enough to be heard through the door.

Cassian winced.

"That was unnecessarily attention-getting," K-2 said. 

"I'm sorry, which of us almost got in a shoot-out because he wouldn't call Lieutenant Sward?" 

"You couldn't see the officer's face. The likelihood he would have believed either of us was very low, and it was much more efficient to skip that part." 

Shaking his head, Cassian focused on jacking NIM's data spike into the computer and starting the download. 

Then there was nothing to do but wait. The only thing that made it even mildly tolerable was knowing Kay was on the lookout. 

Eight minutes later, Kay said, "Time to go." He opened the office door, and a moment after Cassian recalled NIM into a defensive array, they were running down the corridor. 

Not fast enough. At the far end, four Stormtroopers rounded the corner, raising their blasters. 

An ASP followed behind, and Cassian's stomach dropped.

It towered above the Stormtroopers, a hulking machine twice as wide at the shoulders as any human, its head and exterior plating were all styled to look like a more aggressive Stormtrooper in shiny black durasteel. Its fists were twice the size of Kay's, there were who-knew-how-many blasters and munitions in a rack on its back, and the ringing of its feet on the polished floor indicated enough mass to crush Cassian and Kay both at the same time. 

Cassian dashed for the cover of the cross-corridor alongside Kay, the crackle of blaster bolts ionizing the air close enough to smell. Cassian wished his tentacles were equipped to handle a blaster, but being able to watch their backs as they ran headlong through the building was at least something. 

The problem was, they were getting farther and farther away from the door.

"Window?" Cassian panted, "or roof?"

"Window. The factory floor has some along the catwalk." 

Kay didn't have to say that there was enough space, cover, and activity on the factory floor to give them a fighting chance. Cassian was already thinking about the layout he'd learned through NIM's explorations. 

They barreled through the door just as the attack squad made the corner of the corridor and started shooting again. They had maybe ten seconds to find cover, a distraction, or both. 

Cassian ducked and rolled underneath a conveyor belt, scrambling to get as much machinery between himself and the attackers as possible. He ignored the workers shouting at him but kept an ear pricked for the enemy. 

When he got his back against some kind of sorting machine, he peeked a camera around the corner. Kay was nowhere in sight, which meant he'd found cover too, thankfully. 

On the downside, Cassian couldn't see the attack squad, either. He scanned the room for a better vantage point.

Of course the windows were on the opposite side from him. The stairs to the catwalk, at least, were a straight shot. 

There was no way to tell if the enemy was waiting just around the corner for him to make a break for it, but there really wasn't anything else he could do. Another quick look, and Cassian was running in a crouch for the stairs. 

He made it two-thirds of the way before a karking  _ grenade  _ landed ten feet ahead of him. If he hadn't had tentacles to grab the row of machines he'd just passed, yanking himself around the corner in less than a second, it would have killed him. 

The explosion blew the top of the machine over Cassian in a screech of metal. Pieces of machine and droid alike rained down, and he and NIM took a few blows. When the dust settled, he was half-buried under the stuff, bruised, ears ringing. 

And yet, whatever Dr. Korden had made NIM's aural sensors out of, it was sterner stuff than human eardrums. Through them he could hear the shouts and fire alarm.

He could also hear the heavy, metallic footsteps of the ASP moving away from his position. Did it think Cassian was dead, or just subdued?

It didn't matter. Cassian peeked his camera out from under the rubble, looking around enough to determine that probably no one would notice if he crawled out. He emerged coated in dirt, a bit wobbly on his feet, but continued on towards the stairs. 

He snaked the camera arm as high above himself as it would go, looking for Kay. There was blaster fire in the corner of the room opposite the staircase.

"Kriff kriff kriff," Cassian muttered, and started climbing the stairs. He tried to get as low and close to the wall as he could to cross the catwalk, and then he was rushing over to where Kay must be. 

Peering over the edge, Cassian saw Kay pinned down behind a machine. Two of the Stormtroopers were lying dead on the floor a few meters away, and Kay had a blaster in his hand.

Cassian frowned. The other two Stormtroopers were creeping closer, well within range. Why wasn't Kay shooting them? Was he setting some kind of trap?

Every passing second ratcheted the tension in Cassian's jaw tighter. The Stormtroopers almost had their sights on Kay before Cassian realized that Kay, for some reason, couldn't shoot them.

Heart hammering, Cassian squeezed off three shots, dropping both troopers. Kay looked up, and Cassian waved frantically towards the staircase. 

Kay nodded, and Cassian slumped where he lay prone. He crawled away from the corner and towards the windows, though he didn't stop watching Kay, covering his retreat and not at all happy he couldn't see the ASP.

Kay made the top of the stairs, Cassian shot out the nearest window, and then they were both climbing through it, dropping down to the street level below, and running like hell.

* * *

Cassian didn't feel like he took a real breath until they were lying low in a city exhaust pipe half a klick away. Kay's fans were running hard, too, and they were both covered in grime. 

"Kay," Cassian panted, coming closer and starting to look him over for damage. "Are you alright? What the hell happened?" 

Kay began his own inspection. "The ASP has sophisticated networking capabilities. It attempted to add me to its network."

Alarm flashed through Cassian. "It sliced you?!"

"Attempted," Kay said. "It did not succeed. However, the attack was sufficient to occupy ninety-eight percent of my attention."

"Are you sure it failed?" Cassian swallowed. Once they'd left the factory, Kay had been behaving relatively normally, but… "Have you run a diagnostic?"

"I am certain within ninety-three percent accuracy that my software has not been compromised. Four minutes ago, I started a deep scan to raise that percentage. It will be complete in nine more." He bowed his head. "Cassian. If I am wrong, please deactivate me until such time as you can isolate my datacore and remove any hostile programming. If that is not possible, you must destroy all of the contaminated code." 

"What? No!" Cassian spluttered.

Kay stood straight, hands curled into fists. "The ASP came close enough to overriding my firewalls that I saw some of its own activity. It is more strongly networked than KXs ever were. If I am co-opted into that network, not only would I be unable to fight it, there's a chance I would be forced to obey it." He loomed over Cassian. "Even in the best case scenario it would have full access to all of my sensors and data." 

Cassian's stomach dropped. "It couldn't." He groped for Kay's hand. "Your programming is too unique at this point. Isn't it?"

Kay shrugged. "Perhaps. Perhaps not." He held Cassian's gaze. "But you must see why destruction is preferable to that."

Cassian wanted him to be wrong. He shook with the force of it.

He still couldn't deny the truth. 

"Yes," he croaked. Swallowed. "But I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen." 

"Oh," Kay said, looking down.

Cassian didn't understand for a moment. Then he realized that NIM had extended three limbs down to raise him up to eye level with Kay. He watched in surprise as the other tentacles wrapped around both of them, pulling his body against Kay's, holding them together in the galaxy's strangest embrace. 

Cassian was too stunned to do anything for a long moment. After a few seconds, Kay's arms — somehow still free, unlike Cassian's — came up and around Cassian. 

Cassian stopped breathing.

"It's alright," Kay murmured. 

The tenderness, especially after Kay had effectively requested his own demise, was too much. Heart hammering, Cassian tried to push away. He couldn't deal with this now. 

He couldn't get loose, either. "Shit." He started struggling harder. "Kay, I'm not doing this, I can't let go—" He was breathing too fast. He was trapped, and —

Kay pulled the booster over Cassian's head and tossed it two meters down the pipe. NIM's grip loosened, and the machine lowered Cassian to the ground, retracted from both him and Kay, and curled up into standby mode.

Cassian was on his own feet again, but he staggered back anyway, fumbling until his back hit the side of the pipe. He slid down into a crouch and put his head between his knees. 

"In, one, two, out, one two," Kay's voice came from above him, calm and steady. Cassian could handle that, at least. "In, one, two." Follow the rhythm. Breathe. Breathe. Don't think about what just happened, about the danger to Kay, about not being in control, about the feel of metal —

Breathe. 

It took a while— Cassian had no idea how long, exactly. But eventually, he rode out the panic attack, and was just drained. 

"Thanks," he said at last. 

Kay looked at him for a long few seconds, processors whirring, and then just nodded. 

"How." Cassian tried. Shook his head to try to clear it. "Has it been nine minutes? Did anything come up on the diagnostic?"

"It has been twelve, and just the usual data fragmentation."

The relief left Cassian so weak he could barely stay upright. "Thank gods." 

"Usually you thank the stars." 

"Them, too." Cassian would thank a womp rat at this point.

Kay snorted. It made the corner of Cassian's mouth curl upwards. 

When he dragged his eyes back open, he saw Kay staring down at him. 

"What?"

Kay gestured towards NIM. "Operating independent of the user isn't possible." 

Cassian huffed. "So are other things in our lives." He looked at NIM. Glanced across at the booster. "I'm gonna leave this off until we get back to base." 

* * *

Whoever was running security didn't account for the city's exhaust system, and Cassian and Kay made it to their ship in one piece. Staying away while the heat died down was safest, and besides, Cassian had another mission coming up he had to get back for. He refused to think of this one as failed, yet; they'd gotten some intel, and they still might destroy the factory. 

On the way back, he had time enough to think. And talk.

"Did you suspect the networking thing? Is that why you were...out of sorts?"

Kay considered him for a moment before looking out at the blue blur of hyperspace. "I was worried an Arakyd system would try to reclaim me."

"Was there something in the first batch of intel?"

Kay glanced over. "No. That feeling wasn't based on any evidence. I lied, earlier, when I said a manufacturer isn't anything like a homeworld. Enough negative association can foul up even a droid's logic." 

Cassian processed this. "You were right, though."

"No, I wasn't." Kay was annoyed with himself. "It was a fluke that my irrational feeling happened to coincide with events."

Cassian shook his head. "If you say so." He put a hand on Kay's arm. "They didn't reclaim you."

Kay shifted, opposite hand rising off the controls for a second, then settling back down. "No," he said, looking at Cassian's hand. "They didn't."

* * *

"It happened again," Cassian said the moment he was in Dr. Korden's office. 

"'Good morning, Doctor. How are you today?'" she said, without looking up from her datapad. She took a sip of tea from the mug in her other hand. "'I'm well, thank you for asking. How are you, Captain Andor?'"

Cassian scrubbed a hand across his face. "Sorry. Hello." 

More tea sipping. "Hm. I suppose that's probably the best I'm going to get." She put the datapad down and gestured for him to sit down. "Please elaborate what you mean by 'it.'"

Cassian sat. "NIM acting on its own." 

Dr. Korden pursed her lips. "Why don't you tell me exactly what happened." 

After he finished, Dr. Korden sat in thoughtful silence for almost a minute. 

"In both cases, you were worried about your droid. Correct?" 

He might have argued, but Dr. Korden said 'your droid' the same way most people said 'your friend.' "Yes." 

"And NIM clung to him both times."

Heat flared in Cassian's face. "Yeah."

Dr. Korden tilted her head. "It's perfectly natural to want to touch someone you care about after one or both of you have escaped danger. It must be responding to your subconscious impulses as well as your conscious commands — or, in the second case, instead of your conscious commands. I hadn't thought the interface was fine-tuned enough for that, but you've had a very strong integration from the beginning."

Cassian frowned. "I don't secretly want to cling to Kay."

Dr. Korden raised an eyebrow. "I didn't say that, but it's interesting that you did."

Cassian stood, scraping the chair on the floor. "You're wrong. It's something else. It has to be."

Now both of her eyebrows were raised, her skepticism clear. "There's no programming, no signal, nothing else that can control NIM besides you, Captain." She gestured at her datapad. "One of our psychologists could help you come to terms with your subconscious impulses. Would you like me to see who's available?"

Cassian was out the door before he'd really registered his own departure. Well, that answered her question, anyway. 

* * *

Cassian used NIM on a solo mission with no incidents. Then he and Kay were assigned to some simple recon in the Aleen system, and there was really no need for a drone.

Though he didn't use NIM when he wasn't on duty, this was the first mission without it since the surgery. He was unsettled to realize that he'd become so integrated with it that working without it had him off-balance — sometimes literally. He managed, though, and even managed to hide the effects from Kay.

Or at least, Kay hadn't said anything. Before the ASPs, Cassian would have been more sure that Kay saying nothing meant he had nothing to say. 

Those doubts weren't helpful. 

Regardless, Cassian kept using NIM when he and Kay weren't working together, and NIM did as it was told. He was starting to wonder if maybe he should bring NIM back to his missions with Kay as well, but then he'd remember how terrified he'd been by almost losing Kay.

The one time he thought about it while running NIM, the drone curled around him protectively without his conscious input.

So he was more emotional about Kay than most things. It just meant he had to be that much more careful.


	6. Chapter 5

Two months after their escape from the Ansion facility, the informant Cassian had been cultivating came through with another opportunity: military exercises on the opposite side of the planet meant the factory guards would have no backup. 

Cassian packed his gear and climbed onto the ship. He hadn't been expecting Kay to be there.

"This is a solo mission." 

"Don't be stupid. You need me as a slicer and someone else who knows the layout." 

Cassian pushed inside, stowed his bag, and rounded on Kay. "I don't need someone who could be taken over by the ASPs!" He wasn't above fighting dirty, especially if it kept Kay out of harm's way.

"I've had two months to improve my defenses," Kay countered calmly. "Additionally, I've examined the ASP programming manual, and I've developed some viral attacks that have a sixty-eight percent chance of working." 

Cassian shook his head. "My infiltration method requires that I be alone." 

"So infiltrate alone," Kay rolled his optics, "and then let me in the back door." 

Cassian crossed his arms. "No."

Kay stared back. "I'm coming whether you like it or not. If it's not on this ship, I'll steal another."

Kay didn't bluff. Cassian glared at him for another long moment, then made an aggrieved noise with a palm to his face. "Look. I need NIM for this, but if I get too emotional, that's what makes it act weird." 

"I'm glad you've finally figured that out. Can I presume that your recent use of NIM with other teams means that you are likewise aware that you react more emotionally to me than others?" 

Cassian's throat closed. He turned around, stalked to the cockpit, and slapped the button to close the hatch. He began the takeoff sequence, flipping switches in time with the very deliberate breaths he was taking.

Could he possibly do this without NIM? He began running over the mission brief in his head, looking for alternatives.

Kay's hand brushed his on the controls, and Cassian jumped. Stars, was he going to be able to do this at _all_? 

If there had been anyone else with the right skills available, maybe he would have bailed. But there wasn't, and he'd been making himself do the hard thing far longer than he'd been with the Alliance. He could do this. And Kay wasn't wrong about his skills.

Cassian prayed that he was right about his defenses, too.

* * *

Everything in the Ansion Arakyd facility looked the same as it had before: the same gray, black and white paneling, the same elongated ovals of lights at regular intervals, the same background noise of machinery. 

It didn't feel the same. Cassian was even more integrated with NIM, for one thing; those two months of work had made the sensory feed so comfortable that now he missed it even when he wasn't working. Not to mention the convenience of having eight more limbs, and the capability to operate NIM from a distance. 

The other reason was his fear for Kay. Kay was good at his job, and Cassian trusted his skills; but knowing there was a chance of hostile takeover, no matter how small, put a knot in his gut that wasn't going to go away until they were both out of there.

Soon he was standing at the corridor juncture closest the service entrance while NIM jacked into the rear door's controls and opened it. Kay stepped through, and then they were headed to separate destinations: Kay to the farthest corner of the building, Cassian to the deserted break room. He sent NIM through the vents to keep an eye on the security center.

It had one Stormtrooper and the ASP. Two other troopers, according to the ASP manual, were stationed at each quadrant of the facility. Given that the ASP used the troopers' helmets' data feeds as extra sensors, it made sense to give it the widest range possible. 

Unfortunately for them, Kay could be remarkably stealthy when he felt like it, and Cassian had the great pleasure of watching one of the cameras glitch out. When it came back, the first pair of Stormptroopers were lying dead on the floor, blasters gone. 

Of course the Stormtrooper at the surveillance screens noticed and called for a lockdown, just as they'd planned. Cassian took note of the number and route of troopers called to deal with the 'intruders.'

"Two from the east wing on the upper level," Cassian murmured into the comm link. "Two from the south on the lower." 

"Acknowledged." 

Cassian followed lockdown procedure and crouched under a table. He sent NIM to intercept the fourth pair of Stormtroopers and drop a weak explosive between them. While they were shooting blindly down the corridor, NIM dropped one with an electric shock delivered under the helmet, and the other by strangulation. Then he was back in the vents, racing back towards the security room.

"I got another pair," he commed. "Not the aforementioned." 

"Acknowledged." 

Before NIM made it back, his comm link again crackled to life with Kay's voice. "Two more down."

Cassian grinned fiercely. "Three left." 

Then the smile slid off his face. Out in the corridor were unmistakable, heavy, metallic footsteps. "They're deploying the ASP. I'll get NIM on it." 

"Vector?"

"North." 

Cassian went to the door and pressed his ear to it. Until he could get NIM back in the right spot, he had to rely on his own measly senses. 

NIM made it back to the security room about forty seconds after the ASP left. The room had only the one Stormtrooper left.

But the trooper wasn't looking at the factory's cameras any more. He was staring straight ahead, for all Cassian could tell. 

"How many places can a KX hide?" he sneered, and flipped a few switches on his control panel. "If it doesn't show up on infrared, I'm doing radio next."

Cassian's jaw tightened. The intel had described the extreme control ASP's human supervisor had over it, but it was something else to see.

"The ASP is scanning for you," Cassian warned. "Infrared, radio, maybe something after that." 

Silence from Kay. Cassian's pulse pounded in his ears. "Kay-tu? Status report." 

"Headed towards the target location," his voice came at last. "Have killed the remaining troopers, not counting the one in the security center." 

Cassian let out a long breath. "I'll take care of him, then see what I can do about the ASP. Stay out of its way."

"That is my intention." 

Removing the vent grille in the security room would be too noisy and take too long; the control trooper would shoot NIM before he even got halfway. 

Cassian crept to the door, forced it open, and checked the corridor. No one there. He stuck a detonator to the security room door, armed it, and took cover back in the break room.

The trooper cursed, drew his blaster, and stepped into the corridor. NIM worked on the grille while Cassian set up his shot.

While the control trooper was busy getting shot, NIM jumped down to the control panel. There were no buttons helpfully labeled "turn off ASP," and the ones he'd seen the control trooper using to start an infrared scan were multi-purpose. 

Well, maybe he could find out where the ASPs were being sent, at least. 

"I got the control trooper." 

"Excellent. We have eliminated its network. Without it, it will be much less effective." 

Cassian nodded. "Good. I'm in the records. Should be done soon." 

After several of the longest minutes of his life, Cassian finally, _finally_ , found a file marked "product deliveries," checked to make sure it had the right intel, and began the download.

It took him idly tugging at the booster strap to have a realization, and he groaned. "The kriffing helmet!" 

Leaving NIM on the download, Cassian dashed to the break room. Thankfully, the dead man hadn't thrown up inside the helmet. He grabbed it and started running to the exit, NIM catching up with him. 

Cassian had worn Stormtrooper gear before, and was expecting the tiny lenses and much larger HUD. Superimposed over his normal vision was a rendering of what could only be the ASP's optical feed. 

His heart stopped and he nearly ran into a wall. Kay was face down under the ASP's huge hand, hostile data spike jacked into his scomp.

"No!" he shouted. "Stop! Let him go!"

"Authorization code required," the ASP replied. 

Cassian swore at it. Then he swore some more when he looked at what Kay had been pushed down onto.

It was another control panel. Attached to it was one of the thermal detonators they'd brought with them. 

Kay had made it to the generators and laid the explosives before he'd been caught.

The ASP retracted its data spike and released Kay. Kay stood up. Remained still. Stared straight ahead. The sight sent physical pain through Cassian's chest. 

"No no no no no," he moaned, tearing at his hair. It was his worst nightmare.

Kay's, too. 

Cassian dashed back to the security console, frantically hitting switches, looking for a way to connect with the security network. It was soon apparent that there was nothing but passive surveillance equipment on it. The helmet was the only link he had to the ASP, and he didn't have the codes to make it let Kay go. 

The detonator switch was suddenly very heavy in his pocket. It would let him complete the mission. Kay would be spared slavery and a memory wipe. It's what Draven would want him to do. 

All of his training, all of his orders, all of his life was bearing down on him to push the button. 

Hand shaking, Cassian reached for the switch. Time slowed as he pulled it from his pocket.

Metal darted out and snatched the switch out of his hand. NIM, already secreting the thing in a storage compartment. Then it was propelling him out the door in the direction of the generators. 

Cassian spared only a fraction of a second on surprise before getting his feet under himself. Using all of his limbs to move, flesh and metal like, had him leaping down the corridors, and he made it to the generator room much faster than he could have sprinting. 

Kay and the ASP turned to face him in disturbingly perfect synchronization. But Cassian didn't come through the door at human height; he dove low while NIM leapt off his shoulders and went high, and the by-the-book blaster fire went harmlessly between them. 

While NIM wrapped itself around Kay and wrestled with him for the blasters, Cassian shot dozens of bolts into the ASP. He ducked and wove, staying only barely ahead of the return fire. 

His attacks weren't penetrating the ASP's armor deep enough. He needed to do something differently, and fast.

Cassian got one of the blasters away from Kay, then untangled from him, sending NIM to leap onto the ASP.

It distracted the ASP from trying to kill Cassian, and somehow kept Kay's attention. Soon Kay was shooting at NIM, but badly enough that half the shots were hitting the ASP, and the others were mostly missing.

Either the ASP was a terrible shot, or Kay still had some modicum of control.

That spark of hope propelled Cassian forward, darting in close enough to steal a heavy blaster from the ASP, roll across the floor, and shoot it from prone.

Three shots felled the ASP. Cassian scrambled closer, shooting the head, the comms package — anything that might be transmitting a signal. 

Kay was walking jerkily over to him, like his movement commands weren't in agreement. He raised his remaining blaster on shaky arms.

Cassian flicked his own blaster to ion pulse and shot Kay.

Kay's eyes guttered out and he began to fall, but Cassian caught him in metal limbs.

* * *

With two of his tentacles wrapped around his own legs, and two around his torso, Cassian had enough strength to carry Kay. Two tentacles held Kay with his chest plate against Cassian's back, and two held his legs folded on either side of Cassian's hips. He only needed the tail end of one tentacle to keep Kay's arms folded loosely around his shoulders. It was probably the strangest piggy-back ride in Galactic history, but it worked.

When they were finally at a safe distance, Cassian used the detonator switch. The initial explosion triggered a larger one. It was quite spectacular: the rolling thunderclap of the explosions themselves, and the fire, and the flame-reddened smoke billowing up into the sky. 

Cassian gripped Kay's wrist and tilted his head to press their temples together. 

Sirens began, and Cassian took Kay back to the ship.


	7. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the sex part.

Kay lay inert on Cassian's floor for nearly a week, between coding and mechanical repairs. Cassian resented every minute he had to spend on other things, and only the threat of winding up in Medical while someone else did stars knew what to Kay ensured he ate and slept the little he did. 

Then, finally, after triple-checking everything, it was time to reboot.

"Why am I restrained?" Kay said, then, "Oh. The networking. And you decided to rush into an area where there were not one, but two hostile combat droids."

Memory access: check. 

Weak with relief, Cassian released the heavy-duty binders on Kay's wrists. "It worked out in the end." He swallowed. "At least, I hope it did. I had Vinna check my work, but neither of us had seen that particular kind of slice before."

"Beginning deep scan," Kay said. "Surface-level scans indicate that my code appears to be undamaged."

"That's good," Cassian said, chest tight with emotion. "Stars, Kay. That must have been awful." 

"It was," Kay said. "I have made notes of the salient points and deleted the memories." 

Cassian blinked. "Fair enough." 

"Back to my original point. Why didn't you simply detonate the factory?"

Cassian swallowed. He brushed several tentacles along Kay's shoulders, arms and face while lacing their fingers together. "I literally couldn't. Grabbed the switch right out of my own hand and dragged myself down the hallway." 

Kay looked at their joined hands. He exerted ever so slightly more pressure, then looked back at Cassian. "And you don't resent or regret that?"

That stung, but Kay wasn't wrong to ask.

Part of him was insisting that he should, but Cassian ignored it. "I don't." 

"Why not?"

He hadn't articulated the idea even to himself yet, but it wasn't a subconscious impulse that wrapped a tentacle around Kay's arm and raised his hand to Cassian's mouth. It was just as much a deliberate choice as kissing Kay's knuckles.

Kay's optics locked onto Cassian's face and he reached out with his free hand. He traced his thumb across Cassian's cheek and nestled into his hair. "Finally. Only you would need to radically alter your neurology before you could accept your own feelings."

Even while leaning into the touch, Cassian barked a laugh. "Do I want to know how long you were waiting for me to get my head together?"

"One hundred and twenty-seven days," Kay said, and then his fingers were on Cassian's lips. "You have quite a lot of missed time to make up for."

"Guess I'd better get to it." He kissed Kay again. He'd only been thinking about kissing Kay for the last minute, but it came with the sweet, aching release of a long-held wish. 

Kay hummed as his fingers mapped the swell of Cassian's bottom lip. The touch was gentle, slow, but no less electrifying for it; it lit up everything inside Cassian, and in response he leaned forward and closed his lips around Kay's fingertips. 

"Oh," Kay said. "This is just as wet, but much more pleasant than I'd predicted." 

"You've been thinking about this?" Cassian pulled back enough to say. "Tell me everything." 

Kay sat up, leaning closer. Cassian moved his palm across Kay's chest plate in a slow caress. 

"Given the presence of fine sensors in my hands, I had determined that they would be the site of the most effective external stimulation."

"Mmm," Cassian agreed, taking Kay's first two fingers deeper into his mouth.

"Ah," Kay said, fans increasing. "Yes. I believe I was correct."

One of Cassian's tentacles gestured for Kay to continue. He hadn't tried to make it do that.

"Internal stimulation would have more pronounced effects, if my simulations are correct—"

The idea was vivid in Cassian's imagination: Kay, maybe in his charging dock, imagining sex in the kind of detail he usually applied to tactical scenarios. Imagining sex with him. Cassian inside his chassis. 

He moaned around Kay's fingers. 

"Mm, I like the vibrations," Kay said. He moved closer, his free hand stroking Cassian's hair. "I was saying. Internal stimulation of my sensory circuits would have a more pronounced effect, assuming the correct method. I believe I would experience a pleasurable overload and restart analogous to an orgasm." 

A thrill ran down Cassian's spine; Kay could _come_? He redoubled his efforts, sucking harder, pulling slowly off Kay's fingers as he did.

"Human anatomy," Kay continued, vocabulator starting to purr, "Has many more possible methods of stimulation. I have projected eight hundred and forty five scenarios, and only so few because I lacked critical data."

"Eight and a half _hundred_ is 'few'?"

"You know my rough tactical simulations can run into the low thousands, and if I want to be very precise, I need at least ten thousand." His hand was smoothing down Cassian's jaw and throat, tracing his collar bone. "But I don't yet know how you like to be touched, or where, or how long your average arousal lasts, or many other things." 

Kay slid his fingers back into his mouth. Even as Cassian eagerly accepted them, his momentum faltered. Responding to Kay was easy, but he had no images in his mind, no flashes of sensual brilliance. No idea what he might like, or how to ask for it even if he did.

Kay noticed. "Is something wrong?" He pulled back, put both hands on Cassian's shoulders.

Cassian shook his head. "No." Kay's thumbs moved in slow arcs across his collar bones, and that was good. Cassian opened his mouth to ask Kay to keep trying the things he'd simulated.

He didn't get a word out before two tentacles slithered up his sleeves, and a third under his collar. Together they removed his shirt remarkably quickly.

Stars. Of course.

Cassian laughed.

"What's so amusing?" 

"NIM's helpful in more ways than I thought." 

"Because it was not intended for sexual purposes and thus your continued use of it now is somewhat ironic?" 

"That, too." Cassian didn't elaborate; he was too busy getting his limbs into comfortable positions as NIM dragged him onto Kay's lap.

He attended to Kay's fingers again while Kay used his other hand to explore Cassian's chest. Cassian leaned into the caresses, gasped when Kay squeezed his nipples, and moaned when Kay's hand proved big enough that he could play with both at once.

"Apparently these do have a function," Kay said, smug.

Cassian huffed a laugh, though that turned into a gasp when Kay pressed the hard edge of his fingertips against the buds of his nipples. It had only been a few minutes, but already Cassian's cock was throbbing against the inseam of his trousers.

Tentacles began pulling at Cassian's belt. Their manipulating digits weren't quite dextrous enough to unfasten it, and Cassian had to stop and use his hands lest NIM simply tear through the fabric.

He'd barely kicked his trousers into a corner before tentacles had wrapped around Kay's wrists and brought his hands, rather impatiently, to Cassian's hips. Shit.

"Sorry," Cassian said, hand going to the booster. "I can decouple." 

"Absolutely not," Kay said. "I'm not about to give up your only means of direct communication."

"Not my _only_ ," Cassian protested, but weakly, as he was too busy focusing on the feel of metal fingers cradling his hips. That didn't last very long, though, as his tentacles dragged Kay's hands to his ass. Kay squeezed. Cassian moaned. 

"Besides," Kay murmured, pulling Cassian closer still, "the synthesis of your body and its machinery is...compelling." 

Cassian whined as his cock filled out even more. He had hands on Kay's chest and tentacles winding around him; no idea what was coming next, but every confidence that he would like it.

Kay continued his attention to Cassian's ass and thighs. Every squeeze drove his desire hotter, his need more insistent. Another tentacle took one of Kay's hands and guided it back to Cassian's mouth. He spent a long moment in the circuit of pleasure between the fingers down his throat and the hand at his ass, soaking up every sensation, treasuring Kay's little sounds and the flickering of his optics. 

At some point, he was working his tongue around Kay's silver knuckles when there was a nudge against his rim. He lurched against Kay, gasping. "Fuck!" 

The slow and gentle-yet-insistent pressure of the tentacle made it very difficult to remember if he still had lube by the bed, but as soon as he did, another tentacle dragged it within reach.

Kay took pity on him and squeezed some into his hand, then reached down to coat the tip of the tentacle. 

"I'm going to keep hold of this," Kay said. "It will be more fun, and safer." 

Cassian clung to Kay's shoulders. The tentacle, now slick, eased its way into his ass, the minute ridges of each metal segment now extremely noticeable. The curling, twisting motion of it was like nothing he'd ever taken before, and very good, and soon his was fucking himself with it, the tentacle pulling Kay's fist against him with every thrust. 

Then it pulled out, and Cassian was left confused and frustrated until another tentacle wound around Kay's wrist and pulled until Kay was sinking two slick fingers into him.

"Fuck, Kay." He could feel every plane and curve of Kay's fingers as they filled him. He trembled with the effort of not fucking himself down on them before he was ready, with the hugeness of the sensation, with the fact that it was Kay.

" _Cassian."_ Kay's electronic growl set his blood on fire. "I'm going to make you climax." 

Cassian would have come right then if it hadn't been for the tentacle suddenly wrapping itself around his balls and the base of his cock. He half-collapsed against Kay, breathing hard, feeling Kay's fingers in every nerve in his body, but he didn't come.

"Cassian?" The fire in Kay's voice had banked, leaving room for concern.

This, at least, Cassian had a word for. "Together?" 

Kay's optics flicked from Cassian's face, to his cock, and back. "I'd certainly like to try." His hand stilled inside Cassian, letting him catch his breath. 

A moment later, tentacles were sliding over and around Kay, nosing at the gaps in his plating. _Internal stimulation,_ Kay had said.

"Is it okay," Cassian said. "Can I—?"

"Please," Kay said, and then NIM was winding tentacles up under Kay's chest plate and through the openings at his shoulders.

Kay shuddered. Cassian cupped his face in both hands. 

"I am alright," Kay said. "It is simply...new." 

Cassian kissed him on the vocabulator. "Where?"

"The central sensory node," Kay said, free hand settling at the small of Cassian's back. "Can you find it?"

Cassian's eyes unfocused as he activated NIM's camera. His breath caught. 

He'd seen inside Kay's chest plate before, of course, and fairly recently, given the repairs; but it was different like this. Seeing Kay from the inside was like boarding a perfectly-engineered ship, or looking up to see sunlight filtering into an intricate temple. 

He could hear, too, he realized: the auditory arm was inside Kay as well, and the familiar, beloved sounds of Kay's fans and drives were magnified. No, not magnified; uncovered, because he heard new sounds, too, ones normally too faint to detect through plating, though he could guess which machinery produced them. The reverberations of it all hummed through Kay's hardware in perfect aural synthesis.

Cassian had never been so glad to have done the wrong thing on a mission. His knuckles went white on Kay's shoulders. _"Kay."_

Kay studied his face, optics flitting from eyes to mouth to brow and back, and then he dimmed his optics and gently pressed their foreheads together. "Cassian." 

When he'd had a moment to breathe Kay in, Cassian spoke again. "How should I do this?" 

Kay told him: how to tune his spark projector to the lowest possible frequency; how to slide his tentacles along the bundles of wires running between sensor node and processors; how to send pulses of power into the node in time with stroking the leads. Soon Kay was making one long, constant hum comprised of several tones, the notes changing when Cassian did something especially pleasurable.

"Yes, like that, Cassian, like that," Kay murmured, and then curled his fingers to press Cassian's prostate. Cassian hadn't realized he'd sunk all the way down onto Kay's fingers, and the starburst in his nerves made him cry out in surprise and pleasure both. His cock, flushed and harder than ever, pulsed in the tentacle's grip. 

"You close?" Cassian panted.

"I— I believe so," Kay said. "On my mark, increase the frequency by zero point five units." 

Cassian nodded. Then all he could do was use his rapidly-decreasing brainpower to focus on getting Kay off the best he could, pushing through the pleasure-haze of Kay's fingers stretching his rim, filling him, pressing his sweet spot. Kay's sounds ramped up, and various components began trembling, like he was losing control of his motion commands. 

"Mark," Kay said, and Cassian obliged. 

"Yessssss," Kay fizzed, and closed his free hand around Cassian's cock.

Cassian cried out, but the tentacle didn't budge, and his imminent orgasm built higher and higher behind its restraint. He was so hard it hurt, but he wanted to feel Kay come more than he wanted release. 

Kay's fingers pushed up into him, and his fist pumped Cassian's cock, and Cassian thought he might explode or shake apart with how much electricity there was under his skin. He fed real electricity into Kay's node at the requested frequency, the tentacles inside stroking faster in time with Kay's fist around his cock, and then Kay was making a garbled noise, just a little too much power flowing through all his systems.

The tentacle fell away from Cassian's cock, and in the next instant they were both coming, flaring and shaking and crying out together, Kay's overload crackling over Cassian's skin. Cassian may have whited out in pleasure, or that might have been Kay's optics brightening, or both might have happened. Cassian was a wreck of pleasure, too blissed-out to perceive or understand much of anything.

He came back to himself only slightly before Kay finished rebooting. They were lying in a tangled heap of man, droid and tentacle, Cassian's come all over them both. 

"What a spectacular mess," Kay said, self-satisfied. His fingers were still inside Cassian. He didn't remove them. 

Cassian grinned and snuggled closer. "Yep." His tentacles were still inside Kay. He found he didn't want to do anything about that just yet, either. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [You, Me, and the Monsters Inside Us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28238511) by [robotboy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotboy/pseuds/robotboy)




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